ED5T and the 2013 Russian DX contest

Once again, conflicting agendas meant that I wasn't able to take part in this years Russian DX contest. However, Vic EA5KV and CW wizz Belar EA5YI got together with our contest mentor José Miguel EA5DFV and long time contest partner Pascual EA5CLH, for a multi-single entry. I was finally able to get up on sunday morning to witness the end of the contest, and find out just why those who participate say this is a great contest!

The guys managed a nice rate throughout the contest (over 2700 contacts in 24 hours) but looking at the scores posted so far, seems that the score was pretty average, there are a lot of big numbers out there! To be fair, the antenna situation meant that there weren't antennas available for the mult station, only one tribander, the 40m yagi, and wires for 80 and 160. The 40m yagi was shown to tune up nicely on 15 though and some multipliers were caught that way!

Here's a shot of the summary at the end of the 'test:

This gives an idea of why its a nice test: 24 hour format, CW and SSB modes, and countries + russian oblasts as multipliers, makes for an interesting exercise in strategy planning.

And at the end of the day, what counts is "having fun", and I think the final photo shows some pretty happy faces! (How much iof that is also to do with the fact that we got to put José Miguel's Elecraft K3 through its paces?!)

From L to R, EA5DFV, EA5KV, EA5YI, EA5ON, EA5CLH

Lets see if next year I'm able to participate in this one.